Disgrace of Gijón: World Cup Spain 1982 Part 1

Throughout the history of the most important tournament in the world of football, there are many and many cases of controversy over matches, as many rumors and talk were and still deal with the integrity of referees on the one hand, and talk about conspiracies or cooperation between teams over the results of matches, but although the tournament did not witness any official acknowledgments of this type of activities in its history, however, there are pivotal stations in the history of the tournament, perhaps the most famous of which took place in the 1982 World Cup in Spain.

The match that we will talk about here was the last match in the group stage of the World Cup 1982, which took place in the Spanish city of Gijon between the teams of West Germany and its nearby neighbor Austria.

Where the match ended with a score of 1 - 0 in favor of the Germans, which allowed them to qualify alongside Austria to the second round of the tournament, while Algeria and Chile were eliminated from the group stage.

In the 1982 World Cup, the German national team was the first candidate to win the title, as the Germans were going through a golden age in terms of having the best players at the time, and being the first candidate was not surprising for their part.

The Germans were completely confident that they would easily win the title, even though they traveled with only 19 players, instead of the maximum number of 22 players.

In the first round, Germany was drawn with Austria, Algeria, and Chile, and although these teams are known to be several stages weaker than the German national team usually, the Germans were very confident in qualifying easily, especially since the first match was with Algeria.

In fact, the level of self-confidence of the Germans reached its highest, as the national team manager stated that he would return with the first train to Germany if his team was unable to beat Algeria.

The situation with the German players was not really different, as one of them stated that he would dedicate his seventh goal to his wife, and the eighth to the dog he keeps, while another stated that they would defeat Algeria even if they smoked cigars during the match. But what happened was very different.

Algeria achieved their first and perhaps the most important victory in the history of its participation in the tournament, and beat the arrogant Germans 2-1, which was considered a humiliation for a team qualifying for the first time in its history.

While Algeria beat Germany 2-1, Austria defeated Chile 1-0, later in the second round of the group, Germany beat Chile 4-1, while Algeria lost to Austria 2-0.

Here, it is important to remember that the last stage of the group stage was not played at the same time as it is currently, but is played as the other rounds, and in the first match of the stage, Algeria defeated Chile 3-2, and the matter remained pending the Austria-West Germany match.